Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea

by Steven Callahan

  I lean my left elbow on the top tube of the raft to steady my aim, and I lightly rest the arrow of the spear between my fingers. I pull the gun handle high up onto my cheek with my right arm, tensed and steady, awaiting the perfect shot. I can sight down the shaft, and rocking back and forth gives me a narrow field of fire. On the water’s surface is an imaginary circle about a foot in diameter into which I can shoot without moving my steadying elbow off the raft tube. If I am not well braced, my shots will become wild. The effective range of the spear has been shortened from about six feet to three or four. I must wait until a fish swims directly under my point so that it will be in range and the problem of surface refraction_which makes the fish appear to be where it is not_will be minimized. This problem is extreme at oblique angles to the water. When I shoot, I must extend my range and power as much as possible. I thrust my arm out straight and lunge as hard as can with mv whole body, trying to hold my aim. The shot must be instantaneous because the fish are so quick and agile, but it also must be perfectly controlled. Once I lift my left, steadying arm off of the tube, it becomes hopeless. I watch the fish swimming all over the place, but I must wait for one to swim within my field of fire. I remain poised for minutes that stretch into hours at a time. I feel like I’m becoming an ancient bronze statue of a bowless archer.

  I must remain poised for minutes that stretch into hours at a time.

  The doggies’ nudging has become an advantage. I push my knees deeply into the floor just behind my arrow, luring them on. Bump, and a body slithers out, a little too far to starboard. Bump, a little too far to port. Head center! Do it! Splash! Strike! Ripping strong pull, white water, a cloud of blood. He’s in the air. HUGE! A spray of blood. Ow! Feels like I’m being smashed by an oar as he slides down the spear toward me. Don’t let go, get him in, quick! Fury flapping, blood flying. Watch the spear tip, the tip, fool! On the floor, onto him, now! The huge square-headed body lies still for a moment under my knee as I press my full weight down on him. His gills are puffing in rhythm with my gasps as I try to grasp the spear on both sides of his torso and give myself a moment’s rest. A hole as big as my fist has been blasted out of his body, which stretches almost all the way across the floor. Globs of clotting blood swill about in the crater created by my other knee.

  Whap, whap, whap! His thunderclapping tail smashes into action. I’m knocked over backward. He’s escaped. The tip, watch the tip! He flops all round the raft, making for the exit. Pain in my wrist. Pain in my face. He’s winning! I fumble for the tip of the spear as it whips about. Finally I tackle the fish, throw him down onto my sleeping bag and equipment sack, and bury the spear tip in the thick fabric. Both of us are panting. I can’t reach my knife. His eye clicks around, calculating—little time left, and he knows it. Whap, whap, whap—he’s off again. Look out! Fire shoots up my left arm. “Get down there, down!” Whap, whap, cracking around the raft like a bullwhip. Back on the bag again. Sprawled across him, pushing with my legs to get him pinned. Gills puffing. Get the knife. Push it in. Hits something hard—the spine. Twist it. Crack. Wait. He’s still panting, slowly panting, stopped panting. Rest … I’ll not do that again.

  I can’t believe that the raft hasn’t been ripped. I examine the spear carefully; it is only slightly bent, and the lashings held. I listen but hear no hissing leaks. The tubes still feel hard. Blood and guts are spewed everywhere, some of it mine, no doubt. I’ll try to stick to the smaller females in the future. Also from now on I will carefully arrange my equipment before beginning to fish. I’ll stretch out the sailcloth across as much of the bottom as possible, put my cutting board down, and spread my sleeping bag over the tubes on the starboard half of the raft above my equipment sack. I have overcome the first serious gear failure since I coaxed the solar still to work.

  For hours I slice up my grand fish. First I hack it into four large chunks, plus the head and tail. Then I slice each chunk into four long pieces, one from each side of the back and one from each side of the belly. Finally I slice these into sticks which I hang on strings to dry, like dozens of fat fingers, delicious fat fingers. I write in my log that this is a strange prison in which I am slowly starved but occasionally thrown a twenty-pound filet mignon.

  The first weeks of my unplanned raft voyage have gone well—as well as can be expected. I escaped the immediate peril of Solo’s sinking, have adjusted to my equipment and the environment, and am now actually better stocked with food and water than when I began.

  So much for the positive side. The negative is only too obvious. Lack of starches, sugars, and vitamins has let my body wither. My gluteus maximus was the first to go. Where my plump ass once was, there are only hollows of flesh ridged by pelvic bones. I try to stand as often and as long as possible, but my legs have badly atrophied and hang from my hips like threads with little knots for knees. There was a time when three hands could not encircle my thighs; now two will do, and nicely at that. My chest and arms have thinned but remain fairly strong due to the exercise demanded by survival. How the body steals heat or food from one part to lend to another, how it compensates for deprivation by shutting down all but the essential systems, how it possibly can keep this wreck running in this demo-derby of flesh, is all beyond me, amazing, almost amusing. I write in my log, “No more fat on this honky!”

  The cuts on my knees still have not healed. Other gashes have left thick scars. Dozens of small slits on my hands, made by my knife or fish bones, never seem to mend. Scar tissue builds up around the wounds like little volcanoes, leaving raw craters inside. Though I’m meticulous about sponging up water and keeping Ducky dry, I’ve spent about half of my time wet. The salt water sores begin as small, infected boils that grow, burst open, and leave ulcers penetrating the skin. These continue to widen and deepen, as if a slow-burning acid were being dropped on the flesh. But so far my work at keeping dry has paid off I have only a dozen or two open sores about a quarter inch across clustered on my hips and ankles. My cushion and sleenine bae when dry are encrusted with salt which grinds into my wounds.

  MARCH 3

  DAY 27

  It is sunrise of the twenty-seventh day since I began my voyage in Rubber Ducky 111. I roll and tie up the canopy’s entry closure so its cold, wet skin won’t lash across mine. I poke my head out, turn aft, and watch the rising sun as awestruck as a child witnessing it for the first time. I note its position relative to the raft.

  Creases in Ducky’s soft tubes open and close like toothless black mouths, munching on strings of glue and the white chalk markings of the raft inspectors. Sometimes I wonder who made these marks and what they are doing now. I hope that they are well, for they have done a good job and I am grateful. I push the pump hose into the hard white valves and begin my work, a job as thankless and never-ending as washing dishes and as tiring as a marathon. Ringed treads on the pump have worn thick callouses into my thumbs. The bellows utters a short, high-pitched whimper each time I squeeze it, like those baby dolls that cry out and weep tears Uuh uuh uuh uuh one two three four uuh uuh uuh uuh fifty-seven fifty-eight fifty-nine sixty I cause canting feel the tube—not quite as firm as a watermelon yet—and continue. Then the bottom tube. Noontime sunset midnight, and morning, I squeeze the crying pump. In the early days I had to listen toonly sixty whimpers each day; now I have to squeeze over three hundred from the hateful little beast.

  The still is sagging. Each morning I blow it up, empty the salt water from the distillate, and prime it. Then I get up to take a look around. Tricky. On a ship’s solid deck the waves’ motions are averaged out. Here my legs fall and rise with every ripple. Tiny bubbles and gurgles tickle the bottoms of my soft feet. Their callouses washed off long ago. I hang lightly on to the canopy, conscious that a hard tug may collapse it and drop me into the sea. Standing up in my vessel is a little like walking on water.

  The only companions in sight are a petrel and a graceful shearwater. The petrel looks as out of place as I, fluttering like a sea chickadee, teetering on the edge of flight
, heading straight for a clumsy crash. In reality he is having no trouble. I’ve seen petrels in shrieking winds, flapping from one gigantic wave canyon to another. They weigh only a few ounces and you’d think that they’d be blown off the face of the world. The tiny petrels, even the much larger shearwaters, will make a very meager meal, but I’ll still try to grab one if it ventures close enough. Neither has any need for my dangerous company. They are only curious enough to swoop by every now and then. Their minute black eyes flit over every detail of the raft as they pass. I can watch the flight of the shearwaters for hours. They rarely flap their wings, even when it is flat calm. Then they glide in a straight line close to the surface of the water in order to use the surface effect. In heavy airs they wheel about in large arcs and then dive down so close to the waves that you can’t see any space between their feather tips and the water. To me, they are the gods of grace. The shearwaters make me feel very clumsy and remind me how ill suited I am to this domain.

  Robertson’s book includes tables of the sun’s declination, which I use to fix my direction at sunrise. I can do the same at sunset. At night I can fix my heading from both the North Star and Southern Cross. The heavens have provided me with an unbreakable, immortal, fully guaranteed compass. To measure my speed, I time the passage of seaweed between Rubber Ducky and the man-overboard pole. Earlier I had calculated the distance to the pole to be about seventy feet, or 1/90 of a nautical mile. If it takes one minute for a piece of weed or other flotsam to pass between Ducky and the pole, I am going 60/90 of a mile each hour, or ⅔ of a knot, which works out to 16 miles a day. I make up a table for times from 25 to 100 seconds, 9½ to 38 miles a day. I never do see a 38-mile day.

  Since my chart shows the entire Atlantic Ocean on one sheet, my snail’s-pace progress is hardly worth plotting on a daily basis, but every couple of days I plot another eighth or quarter inch. I kid myself that I only have a little ways left to travel—why, it’s only about six inches on the map.

  I am confident that we, that is Ducky and I, have reached the lanes and will soon be picked up, but we may well have drifted beyond them. I have tried the EPIRB again to no avail. The battery must be very low now. I must wait until I see positive signs of land or air traffic before I try it again. As soon as we arrived at what I thought to be the edge of the lanes, the wind strengthened. Perhaps Zephyrus wants to push us through before we can be spotted. I’m not too disappointed; it’s a relief to be moving purposefully forward. There’ve been no sharks. There has also been only one ship in six days—pretty empty ocean highway.

  Conditions are favorable for my tub. It’s blowing hard enough to move us well, but not so hard that the waves are blasted apart. Unless we are hit by a rogue wave, Ducky will stay on her bottom. She slues down the slopes with a speedy motion that is smooth, quiet, and peaceful, seemingly frictionless. I get a vision in my head that I can’t shake, one of a spaceship gliding in large curving banks through the vastness of space. In my log I sketch Rubber Ducky converted to a flying saucer with a wide band around her perimeter, studded with lights. I surround her with planets, stars, and fish.

  Time for breakfast. I fall back on my cushion and lean up against the equipment sack. I flip my sleeping bag over my legs, awaiting the warmth of the day. The fish sticks that have been hanging for two days are semidried and slightly chewy. Dorados begin their own daily routine, bumping my rear several times before flipping off to hunt.

  Eight hard-won pints of water are carefully stored in three unopened water tins, two recapped and taped tins, two distillate plastic bags, and my working water jug. The butcher shop is chock-a-block full of fish sticks. Wet fresh protein is digested with less water than cooked or dried meat, so I try to eat a lot of my catch early on. As days pass and it gets chewier, I carefully ration the meat and begin fishing again.

  I’ve become worried about my digestive tract. Dougal Robertson points to the case of one survivor who had no bowel movement for thirty days. By the time the body is through digesting the minuscule amount of food taken in, there simply is very little to move. I feel no urge to go but worry about a hemorrhoid that has puffed out. Should my plumbing suddenly blast loose, I may be in for a rupture and hemorrhage, which would be difficult to plug up and heal. I begin modified yoga exercises—twisting, bending, arching, stretching—slowly learning how to balance and compensate for the motion of my waterbed. On the thirty-first day, the bloody bubble begins to subside and a small amount of diarrhea relieves my apprehension.

  Early morning, dusk, and night are the only times that I can coerce my body to exercise. By noon the temperature has rocketed to ninety degrees or more. It might as well be nine hundred. My body has no water to sweat. The air trapped inside of the raft is humid and stagnant. Staying conscious and tending the solar stills are major struggles. My spinning head coaxes me. Must get up, look around. Slow, easy now, to your knees. I gaze into the lively blue water. O.K. Wait now, maybe a few minutes. I try to get my eyes to focus, but they stumble about in my head, smash into the sides of my skull, and bounce back. Grab the can, careful not to drop it, already lost one. I dip it down with a gurgle, raise it above me, and let the water fall, massaging my neck and tangled hair with cool relief. Again I dip the can, again and again, imagining that I’m crawling into shaded tall wet grass under a billowing willow tree.

  Slowly now, lift your head. Look right. Look left. O.K. Up on one leg, now the other. Stand. “Good boy,” I say aloud as I sway about in semidelirium, hoping that I will cool off and my head will clear. The wind flash-dries the drops of seawater trickling down my body, escorting tiny streams of heat away. Sometimes the ritual works. I steady up and remain erect for several minutes. Other times my head feels as if it is being crushed by a heavy weight, my vision fills with swirling bluish haze, and I collapse, using the residue of my senses to guide my fall back into the raft. Yes, I am in much better shape than I thought I’d be by this time, but at high noon I am often “beyond the point of coherent action,” as Robertson so dryly puts it. If I can just keep myself together, I can make it to the islands. But how much longer can I hang on like this?

  Refiguring my position time and again, I put myself about a thousand miles away. Average speed, twenty-five miles a day. Total passage time, seventy days. If only I can guide myself to Guadeloupe. I’ve got the raft positioned with the canopy across the wind, and the line astern is just off center to guide Rubber Ducky III a little bit south of west just as fast as she can waddle.

  From the Canaries I wrote to my parents and friends, “Expect me in Antigua around February 24.” That was seven days ago. Yet I also warned them that the trade winds hadn’t filled in yet, so I might arrive as late as March 10, seven days hence. If a search is made then, I will still be out of range, way too far out to sea. If only a ship will pick me up soon, those at home won’t begin to worry.

  I see a shark fin zigzagging in quick pumps across Ducky’s bow, about a hundred feet away. It’s a small fin, but I’m still glad that he shows no interest in us. Instead, he slides off to the east against the wind and current to await food that is drifting or swimming with the North Equatorial stream.

  Like most predators, sharks cannot afford to be seriously hurt, because an injury or weakness can prevent them from hunting and may even invite an attack from their own kind. So most sharks bump their prey before attacking. If the prey puts up no defense, the shark will dig right in. They will eat anything; license plates and anchors have been found in their stomachs. I wonder about life rafts. I count on their bumping to give me a chance to drive them away. But I also think about Jaws. I have heard stories of two great white sharks caught since that film came out. Both of the real sharks were about the same size as the mechanical prop, twenty-five feet long, and weighed upward of four tons. Great whites are an unpredictable species. They are so big, ferocious, and powerful that they know no natural enemies and never worry about their prey putting up a significant defense. They give no warning of their attacks and have been known
to smash boats and even attack whales.

  Then there are orcas, or killer whales, known to have blown large yachts apart. I look at my little aluminum and plastic spear, weighing maybe a pound or two. The point might cause a small shark as much pain as I would feel from a mosquito bite. Even if a small shark forces a showdown at high noon, I’ll be pathetically slow to the draw. I’d love the option to get out of this town.

  With shivering nights and scorching days, only dusk and dawn offer a little comfort. As the sun drops to the horizon, things begin to cool off. I lounge back again as I did in the morning, flip the sleeping bag over my legs, pump up Ducky’s sagging limbs, and watch the sky’s grand finale through my picture window. The sharp white disk peeks out now and again from behind the puffy cumulus collected at the horizon. It is past noon in Antigua. If only I had a raft that could sail at a moderate three knots, I’d be snug in harbor already. I’ll make it anyway … if only I can summon strength I never knew I had.

  As the clouds mill about and wander into the sunset, I prepare my dinner, choosing various pieces of fish for a balanced meal: a few chewy sticks, which I regard as sausages, an especially prized fatty belly steak, and a piece of backbone bacon with thin strips of brown, crunchy flesh. I crack the backbone apart and drop gelatinous nuggets of fluid from between the vertebrae onto my board. A noodle runs down the spine, and I add it to the gelatin, making a chicken soup. An invisible Jewish mama coaxes me. “Eat, eat. Go ahead, my sick darling, you must eat your chicken soup to get well.” Sumptuous tenderloin steaks come from the meaty back above the organ cavity. I choose a couple of fully dried sticks for toast, since they are overcooked and crunchy. The real treats are the organs, when I have them. Biting into the stomach and intestines is like chewing on a Uniroyal tire, so I don’t bother with them, but all else I consume with delight, especially the liver, roe, heart, and eyes. The eyes are amazing, spherical fluid capsules an inch in diameter. Their thin, tough coverings are quite like polystyrene Ping-Pong balls. My teeth crush out a large squirt of fluid, a chewy dewdrop lens, and a papery thin, green-skinned cornea.